Recovery from a physiological or neurological injury is often difficult. Conventional physical rehabilitation following the injury focuses on restoring and/or building physical strength to resume pre-injury activities. For example, a patient may strengthen limbs through physical training, such as walking on a treadmill. However, various injuries may limit a patient's coordination and motor control, and these types of secondary conditions, although possibly improved through building physical strength, may continue to linger despite conventional therapies. For example, a stroke patient may develop asymmetrical control and coordination in the limbs, resulting in a limp or other gait abnormality. Specifically, they may alter their step length/rate ratio at a given speed to on that is inefficient for the purpose of improving gait speed.
This has applications for large number of individuals with disabling conditions. For example, persons suffering from peripheral neuropathy may experience numbness and tingling in their hands and feet, and these symptoms may cause ambulation impairment, such as trouble climbing stairs or maintaining balance. Gait abnormality is also common in persons with nervous system affections such as Stroke, Acquired Brain Injury, Multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), stroke (for example by, ischemia and/or reperfusion and blunt trauma), aging, traumatic brain injury, and Myasthenia gravis. Orthopedic corrective treatments may also manifest into gait abnormality, such as, for example, following a fracture or an arthroplasty (joint replacement).
Gait abnormality may persist even after physical conditions leading to the gait abnormality are resolved. For example, difficulty in walking due to arthritis or joint pains, resulting in an antalgic gait, may persist even after the pain is abated through treatment and medication. In particular, patients may develop improper gait habits that may persist, even if the primary condition is resolved or improved, due to the lost or impairment of proper gait form. Furthermore, conventional therapeutic techniques for gait abnormalities, such as having the patient move at a forced pace on a treadmill, may produce temporary improvements such as normalizing the gait between the patient's two legs, but these benefits are usually temporary, and do not carry over to over ground walking.
The persistent coordination and motor control limitations that impact gait may significantly limit the patient's ability to exist independently and to interact within the community. For example, the patient generally needs to be able to move at a sufficient pace to cross streets within a safe time period. Moreover, unnatural movement patterns may place undue physical stress on the patient's body, thereby leading to further injury that may lead to further gait limitations.